917 Make an Impact and Next Level Success with Dean Graziosi

“I want to make self-education the new norm.”QUESTIONSWhat’s the greatest lesson you’ve learned about intimate relationships that applies to business relationships? (8:00)What are the keys to constantly deepening your love in a long-term relationship that apply to business? (14:13)How to create a hunger within yourself to achieve great things (23:20)What did you learn last year that you’re letting go of this year? (35:49)YOU WILL LEARNWays you can learn to build a profitable career without going to college (2:30)Why 2020 is the year for female entrepreneurs (9:28)The different kinds of entrepreneur you can be (26:30)The message Dean wants his soon to be born son to know (29:31)What happens when you are in complete alignment with yourself (42:01)Who masterminds are for and who they are not for (46:26)If you enjoyed this episode, show notes and more at http://www.lewishowes.com/917 and follow at instagram.com/lewishowes Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 917 with New York Times bestselling author Dean Graziosi. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Nelson Mandela said, "Money won't create success, the freedom to make it will." And Tony Robbins said, "You either master money, or on some level, money masters you." This interview and episode could be one of the most powerful episodes of your life. If you choose to learn the strategies to take your financial freedom to the next level. And this is all about the art of creating financial freedom. And if you don't know who Dean Graziosi is, he's a mega successful entrepreneur, marketer, success coach, business owner, real estate investor, and leading trainer throughout the world. He has also appeared daily on TV in America for nearly 15 years and is highly respected

• 1:18Lewis Howes?

  as an entrepreneur, multiple New York Times bestselling author, inspirational speaker, and his books have sold over 1 million copies. Now, why is this going to be powerful for you? Because Dean is so passionate about creating online education, especially for people who didn't do well in the traditional school system like myself. I was in the special needs classes pretty much my entire schooling years and just struggled. But somehow, I was able to take my knowledge and build it into a successful business today. How did I do that? Me and Dean talk about that. Dean also talks about the biggest lessons he learned since turning 50 years young.

• 1:59Lewis Howes?

  He talks about self doubt and how you can empower yourself to go after your dreams. We also talk about the idea behind Dean and Tony Robbins' mastermind and the power of financial freedom. Now, I want to share a quick story. I was in Fiji with Dean Graziosi and Tony Robbins. They host this private exclusive mastermind from a online training they have.

• 2:23Lewis Howes?

  Called Knowledge Business Blueprint. And they brought me to Fiji and I got to do some behind the scenes. Q and A with both Tony and Dean and about 10 other extremely successful entrepreneurs, building massive businesses. And the things I learned in those five hours and five days that I spent with them was truly transformational from connecting and learning from Tony and Dean. They just have so much experience combined on all that they've learned about how to really build businesses. And in this episode, we're going to hear from Dean directly. But if you want to really learn how to take your expertise to the next level and how

• 3:08Lewis Howes?

  to extract a skill or an expertise or a passion that you have and get a ton of people excited about it to pay you for it. If you want to learn about why writing a book or creating a course or being a consultant is not the fastest way to making a massive impact and profits. And if you want to learn the secret that both Dean and Tony Robbins used when they first got started to launch their business before they were well-known experts around the world, then they are doing a free training for you that will teach you all of these exact things. I've been through this training and it's mind blowing. This free information will literally blow your mind. If you go to greatnesslink.com, you can get that information.

• 3:52Lewis Howes?

  So just write that link down right now, greatnesslink.com. And make sure you sign up for that for free because they're going to teach you some amazing things about this. But this episode is going to blow you away. I'm super excited about you for diving in. Make sure you take notes on this. Make sure you share with your friends because Dean is going to dive in deep and share vulnerable, intimate things that he's never shared before. Right after this was done, he sat there with his wife and he said, wow, I've never shared these things. I think you're going to get a lot of value out of this about the art of creating financial freedom and really letting go of that self doubt that is holding you back from getting the profits and the impact that you

• 4:32Lewis Howes?

  truly want. So I am super excited about this. Again, make sure to tag me at Lewis Howes and Dean Graziosi over on social media and the link to share with your friends at LewisHowes.com/917. Now, without further ado, let's dive into this episode with the one and only Dean Graziosi.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Welcome back to the School of Business Podcast. We've got my good friend Dean Graziosi. In the house, man. Super pumped for you.

• 5:03Dean Graziosi?

  Man, I'm so excited. When we're done, I gotta hear about your trip. So we gotta.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  The trip was crazy. It's a new year, new decade.

• 5:11Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  You've got a baby on the way.

• 5:12Dean Graziosi?

  I do.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  You've got an amazing life right now because, one, because you've got an amazing wife, you've got an amazing baby on the way, but you're impacting so many people with the movement you guys are creating.

• 5:23Dean Graziosi?

  I know. It's pretty awesome.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Which is really cool. I think, I think it's really cool when you meet someone who's learned, who's had a lot of experience in life, made so many mistakes, had a lot of success, failures, over what, 20, 30 years now of you doing business?

• 5:39Dean Graziosi?

  Over 30, yeah.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  And says, you know what, I want to take this information and simplify it and teach people how I did it. I think that's like, it's inspiring to meet someone who's done it.

• 5:48Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  And it's more inspiring to meet someone who's done it and then tries to help others. Do it.

• 5:52Dean Graziosi?

  Well, for me, and the thing is, I mean, at this phase of my life, it's, I appreciate you saying that, brother, because it's what saved my life. Like, if I look at all, I've been blessed. I did well in real estate in my twenties, started with no money. That's really was my momentum. And I've written multiple New York Times bestselling books and all this stuff and failed miserably in between. But if I look back, what really saved my life was learning from other people. And at this, like, at this, like, how could I not want to give that back? It's what changes the world, right? I mean, I want to talk about it today because it's such a part of who I am and what Tony Robbins and I are doing right now. But at the end of the day, self-education is what saved all of us. I mean, this is what you give back to the world. Man, I'm so proud of what you do and,

• 6:33Dean Graziosi?

  and to be, to expose yourself to the world and bring on other people and deliver that value to people. It's a, it's a really noble thing. I mean, I don't know about you, but I do know a little bit because we talked about it. But in high school, my guidance counselor, I mean legit, sat me down. I wasn't taking my SATs. I knew I wasn't going to college. And she looked at me and she was just like, "You're not? Are you sure?" And I said, "Yeah." So it went from no college, like that was gonna be perfect. And I'm not saying college is bad for everybody, but like it was either, "Ah, heavens open and the sunbeams come through, right? And the angels sing." Or she's like, "Oh, no college. Well, maybe you can work with your dad fixing cars." She knew my dad didn't make a lot of money. "Or go apply at the only factory in town for minimum wage."

• 7:17Dean Graziosi?

  That was the two options she gave me, right?

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:20Dean Graziosi?

  So how many people are there out there right now that if the regular path's not working, they think there's no other path, or go working at a gas station? And I'm not knocking if you work at a gas station. I'm just saying that's the way my supposed guidance counselor looked. And what saved me was the third option that I didn't know existed until I knew, was self-education, learning from other people. I found a couple older people in my town. I became friends with them.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Great mentors, yeah.

• 7:42Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, like they became mentors. And then I bought Tony Robbins course, and then Wayne Dyer and Eckhart Tolle. And I started going down this path. I'm like, "Oh, my God." And it changed my life. So I owe such a debt of gratitude to self-education. So it's a pleasure to give it back.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  If you didn't have mentors, and you didn't have books or places you could learn information, where do you think you'd be?

• 8:04Dean Graziosi?

  I'd still be working on cars. I mean, that's just a true story. And here's the thing, what's cool now is why the world has changed. So I'm not a gazillion years old, but being 51 right now, if I look back when I was in my twenties and wanted to do more. So I had dyslexia.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  51? You're 40, man.

• 8:21Dean Graziosi?

  What's that?

• 8:21Speaker 01

  You're 40.

• 8:22Dean Graziosi?

  I'll take that. Well, my wife makes me look young, so that's really good. But in my twenties, I knew there was more. I was going after. I was a hustler. Hands down, I was a hustler. I was running away from a broke, painful, young, you know, lifestyle. When I was young, I didn't like that lifestyle. I was running away from it. So I was working hard.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:40Dean Graziosi?

  And when I wanted to find a mentor, there was no podcasts. I couldn't go listen to Lewis Howes.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  No YouTube shows.

• 8:45Dean Graziosi?

  There was no YouTube shows. There was no Instagram. There was no Facebook. And I had dyslexia really bad, so I hated reading. There was no audiobooks.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:52Dean Graziosi?

  So back then, it was like, if you don't- Find a mentor and you're not good at reading, there's no

• 8:57Speaker 01

  You're screwed.

• 8:57Dean Graziosi?

  You're screwed, right? So I was lucky enough to watch an infomercial. That's, I mean, everybody asked me, why'd you go in the infomercial business 20 years ago? Cause I watched an infomercial, Tony Robbins took my money. He gave me information, it changed my life. I'm like, I want to do that. So that's why I went in that business. So if I wasn't lucky enough to be up late one night and watch Tony's infomercial and then go down this path of like, holy crap, there's people out there that get good at something. And then they extract it and share it. Like I cut him a check and they give me knowledge. Once I understood that you could pay for speed, game changer for life. And then I got upset. I mean, you know, I'm obsessed on it. Masterminds are something I do on a regular basis. We own mastermind.com. We're teaching the world how to do masterminds and extract what they know. Because it's, it's the biggest, it's the biggest needle mover there is.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  It's funny you said that, uh, paying for speed, cause in football, the, the saying is you can't teach speed.

• 9:48Dean Graziosi?

  Oh, got it.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  You'll find guys that run the four, three and the 40, but have horrible hands. Cause you can teach them the other stuff. Speed is a thing you can't teach in sports. You either kind of got it, you can get to a certain point, but it's hard to really get past that, uh, the next point. But in business or in life, you can teach speed.

• 10:07Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, it's, it's the ultimate unfair advantage. It's like, it's this thing that lives out there. And the people that know about it are the ones that are doing better and they're going faster. You don't know why. Right? It's like two people on a restaurant across the street from each other. One's killing it, one's not guaranteed. One's in masterminds or one's learning from somebody or one has a mentor. Or one goes to a live event or has a coach and the other one's trying to figure out through trial and error.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:29Dean Graziosi?

  I mean, if you look at, if you look at what we have as options to learn to go faster, whether that's, you know, you want to make more money to give it all away. You want to make more of an impact. You finally want to start that business you have, or your business is doing okay, but you know there's that next level. Like you see the person next door, like they're doing it. There, there's a couple of ways to get there. You go back to school, kind of the traditional path and we could talk about that. That's, it's just an antiquated system. It's not working anymore. It's not delivering what people need. It did at one point, but it hasn't evolved and people know that. That's why it's, there's a huge exodus from college right now.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:02Dean Graziosi?

  Or we have Trial and error, you figured it out on your own and that can be the most costly, time consuming.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Super costly.

• 11:10Dean Graziosi?

  And besides timely and time consuming and costly, the worst thing about trial and error is everybody has a threshold where they finally get to a point and give up and go back to what they knew, right? It's like you're trying, you're trying, I'll pay the bills over here, but I'm trying, I'm trying, the business is doing okay, I'm trying, it's like, ah, it's not working, I'll go back.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Kind of give up.

• 11:28Dean Graziosi?

  And there's a certain point in life where people just try, try, try, and then they hit this flat spot and they coast forever. Like, they don't die till they're 100, but really at 37, they gave up and they weren't growing, right? But what most people are missing is this whole other world of self-education, right? Whatever it is you want to do, you want to learn, my wife is the number one hairstylist in Arizona for the last eight years. You want to learn how to do extensions and have a, you know, make 10 times more than the average hairstylist, you could try to figure it out, you can go to cosmetology school and go work for somebody, you could try, do it trial and error, or you could spend a weekend on my wife and make several hundred thousand dollars rather than the 28,000 dollars that's the norm. Like, just using that as an example, but it's every niche that exists on the world,

• 12:13Dean Graziosi?

  in the world, if you're starting off at day one, there's somebody out there that's got five years, 10 years, 20 years, and if you can extract what they know.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:21Dean Graziosi?

  Decades in the days, kind of Tony Robbins always says that, you get to start off where they left off.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  So I'm curious, you're 51 years young now.

• 12:28Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  You've been through lots of different business growth, failures, successes, different things, you've had lots of money, you've lost some money, you've made more money, you were married, divorced.

• 12:40Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  New marriage, you have kids from a previous marriage, you've got a kid coming in a new marriage.

• 12:45Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  What's the greatest lesson you've learned in the last, since you turned 50, about intimate relationships that have applied towards business relationships?

• 12:56Dean Graziosi?

  Great, great, great question, and I have no, especially because of our relationship, I have no problem sharing this.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  I know, I know you definitely want to talk about this.

• 13:04Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, yeah, no, but it's a, it's a really good question because, again, not to go back to Tony, but he's my dear friend, and when I was 48, he said to me something that no one ever asked. He said, "Who are you going to become in your 50s?" Because everybody else talks about what you're going to accomplish, and he said that, and it kind of sticks in my head, and, you know... Who I've become in a relationship that's related to business, empathy is probably the biggest word, compassion. And there's a time where I wasn't sure, like, I think empathy or compassion could seem like weakness. Right? And what I realize now that, I know this sounds crazy, but maybe to some people, not to most, especially people who listen to you, but love is the answer to everything. It really is.

• 13:47Dean Graziosi?

  Like, when you love your business, when you love your employees, when you love the impact you're making on people, when you love your wife, when you love your kids, it's an easy word to throw out there, but when you truly understand it on the other side of all the craziness that we've tried to figure out what love is, it changes the game.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:03Dean Graziosi?

  Now, listen, I'm gonna back up here. Because you threw me for a loop and I want to give it. Listen, if people are gonna spend time with us today, there's a million podcasts they can be listened to. They're listening to you. I want this to be one like, holy crap, I'm so glad I listened to Lewis and Dean. But I want to break down something. This is, might be a little different than your question, but the difference between men and women. And why I think, you asked me this question, so I'm gonna do it on this road. Why I think 2020 is the start and the year of the woman entrepreneur, of the woman success. And this is what I learned from my wife, so it'll tie back to your question. And I say that because, and I might not be politically correct, and I'm not perfect.

• 14:42Dean Graziosi?

  You know, if I say this wrong, I apologize, but the balance between women's opportunities and men's wasn't always where it should be. But just face it, right? It was stacked in our favor. But I think we're getting closer. Maybe it needs a lot more evolution, but I think it's closer, we can both agree it's closer now than ever before in history.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 14:59Dean Graziosi?

  Right? And I think women finally, it's not that they don't need permission. I think it's a time where women who have more empathy, just born with it, more compassion, and I think more instinct than men. Right? I don't know about you, but if you're listening right now, ask your husband, or you have your wife, or your grandmother, or your mother, or your sister, has ever been a time you brought somebody around and your wife or girlfriend said to you?

• 15:21Speaker 01

  My girlfriend is this way all the time.

• 15:23Dean Graziosi?

  And said, "I don't think he's a good guy, don't do business with him."

• 15:24Speaker 01

  She says this to me all the time.

• 15:25Dean Graziosi?

  And you're like, "No, no, no, he's good." And what happens six months later? You're right. That guy wasn't so good. You're right. Their instinct is unbelievable. Their empathy and compassion is unbelievable, right? So, and this ties back to the guys too. But if you think about that, for those years, a lot of times that was used in relationships. It was used for their children. Now, it's being used for the world. And simultaneously, we're in a place in society where we're so done with the get rich overnight, get skinny overnight, fall in love overnight, intimacy in two seconds, read this book. Like, we want real so bad. So I think we're at this point where the playing field is more level. And the innate abilities that women have is what the world is craving.

• 16:08Dean Graziosi?

  That's why even in our, the program Tony and I have, it's more women than men crushing it. Wow, really? Yeah, we're about 57% women just destroying it. Like, making such an impact on the world because they tend to be more just real and genuine. Where a lot of times with guys, we're aggressive. We go in, we start selling before we kinda know. We wanna, we wanna make a change before we really understand it. So with that said, being in a relationship where I, you know, I made mistakes in the past in a relationship, but my relationship ended, I'll take just as much responsibility as my ex. I needed to grow. But when I ended that relationship, instead of thinking, I need to, I need to find a better woman, someone who, you know, fits me. And I, I was lucky enough to see that I needed to become a better man.

• 16:53Dean Graziosi?

  Wow. And I worked a lot on myself. And when I decided, and I wrote down on a piece of paper, the only relationship I would accept, I found my wife. And we're three years in, it's the best relationship in my life. We fall more in love every day. But you asked me that question. Going through the pain of a divorce, which was mostly painful because of my kids. My ex and I knew our relationship was done years ago, but I went through a divorce in my childhood. My parents went through a bunch of divorces. So I didn't want to put that on them. But going through that pain was actually the greatest thing because on the other side, just if you're starting a business, in a relationship, trying to lose weight, like the pain of going through it made me realize I had to become better. And I was able to attract the greatest love of my life.

• 17:36Dean Graziosi?

  And then now that I look at her with this love and admiration and I respect her so much that when I see her empathy, when I see her instinct, I trust it on a level I never did before. Then I take those lessons, I push them back out to the world, I put them in my courses, I start on my podcast and all of a sudden people are like, I don't know about this new version of you, Dean, but I love it. I see it in you.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 17:57Dean Graziosi?

  Everybody's like this new version of you and it's, it's, it's not just love. I love, love is amazing, but it's love and respecting what I see in her. And when I give it to the world, I see everything lift, right?

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Now here's a question then.

• 18:11Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  So you're four years in the marriage, relationship?

• 18:14Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Almost six months in the marriage, I think roughly. Four years in, so how do you, you know, in business, sometimes we can get excited about an idea. And we build it up for a year or two, we promote it like crazy. And then we're like, okay, we've done this, we're on to the next idea. Let's launch something new, let's create this product, let's do this. Let's go to a new business plan, right? We're off to the next thing sometimes. And that happens in relationships too. We get excited, we fall in love, there's this emotion, a year, two, three, okay, now I want to try something new. I'm saying everyone, but you seem to figure out a point where like you fall in love more and more every day. Or have more and more respect every day. What's the keys to deepening your relationship in an intimate relationship,

• 18:58Speaker 01

  long-term relationship, marriage and, and falling more in love with the person or the relationship that you can also translate into business as well? How do you do it in your relationship and your marriage now?

• 19:10Dean Graziosi?

  So I would say.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Because it didn't work before and now it is working.

• 19:14Dean Graziosi?

  Just like you said, a couple of years in, looking for the next business. That's how I felt in the last relationships. Just I'll be transparent and say that to you. And it's the complete opposite now. Because I had enough of that pain to realize that doesn't lead anywhere. So that's probably time on this earth to realize that there's never a time where I said, oh, this is so great. It's like you look back. Like that was just dumb. It was a dumb decision. Like I was always searching for, say, the perfect business when I needed to be the perfect business owner. Right? So if you're dabbling and saying, oh, should I work on Shopify? Should I launch a, should I write a book? Should I create a course? Should I do masterminds? Sometimes we're looking for the outside thing to make it great when really it's us. And so I think that's time on this earth and I know how to go deep inside.

• 19:57Dean Graziosi?

  The second thing, just like a business, is burn the boats. Like, I never burned the boat. I always left one boat in the harbor.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  A few boats here and there.

• 20:06Dean Graziosi?

  You know, with the engine running, right? This relationship is so magical to me. And let me back up. When I said, this is what I must have in a relationship and this is what I can't accept in a relationship. And I found that. I found this connection. I found this love. I burned the boats. And I also did, I think they use this in like a 12-step program, but I did like fantasy contamination. Like the way I love this woman, I say this because she's here in the room with us right now.

• 20:35Dean Graziosi?

  There's nothing I can compare that would want me to compromise that love. When she walks in a room, the only man she looks at is me. I screwed that up once. She might still be with me. What if she didn't look at me that way? What if she didn't love me on that level? So I think through, okay, what if I even just flirted with this girl? What if I just text back to a girl that hit me up just to say hi? I'm like, what if she saw that? And then the next time she looked at me, it just didn't have that luster. So I think of that and I contaminate all of it. And I burn the boats and there's zero options.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Wow. What do you call it? Fantasy contamination?

• 21:06Dean Graziosi?

  Fantasy contamination. I heard it someplace, so I'm just going with it. But I do because, and none of them would be more rewarding than this. So burn the boats. First off, you know, make sure you're in the right relationship. Burn the boats. Stay in your swimming lane. And proximity. That's a great one. That was great advice I got from somebody is proximity. Like I used to travel all the time, do events, thousands of people and always be alone. Always, always, always. And the truth is, not that I have any temptation, but I don't want to be alone. I want to grow with my woman. So there's everything I do. And I mean, she's sitting with me now. If I'm on stage, there's eight thou- We just did an event with 8,000 women, Rachel Hollis's event. And I got the audience going crazy, cheering, clapping. They're waiting in line to do it. When I look over, I'm at my wife, right there. And I'm like, that's my woman. That's my everything.

• 21:49Dean Graziosi?

  And when I'm on stage, when I'm on a podcast, I am not, before in previous relationships, I barely talked about my relationships.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Right. I don't think I ever heard you talk about it.

• 21:57Dean Graziosi?

  No, I never did. There's not a time I'm on stage, I'm out in public. And here's this crazy thing, and you know this with your business. And take it back for your business. The more you talk about something.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  With excitement, with love.

• 22:09Dean Graziosi?

  You don't just anchor it into the world, you anchor it into yourself. So with my team, my office, you know, we have 70 people in my team. Every day, every day Louis, I talk about how we're changing lives. We're making self-education the new norm. It's our responsibility to create an alternative to the education system. Our clients aren't leads, they're not, they're not somebody you just sell. These are human beings and they're putting their faith in us to help change your life. This is a responsibility. We get to change lives for a living. I say it so much that I know when people first start working, they're like, oh, this guy Dean, I hear it. But you give it six months, I walk in like, Dean, we changed 2,700 lives this month. Because it became part of it, because it's, I spoke out to the world.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 22:54Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, and plus I write her a note every single week that, you know, that helps too.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:57Dean Graziosi?

  Maybe two a week.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  What's been the, what's the hardest thing to keep it thriving? The relationship and the business?

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Like, is there ever moments where you're like, ah, it's stressful, I got this, I got that, I got kids, you know, traveling.

• 23:13Dean Graziosi?

  I mean, I'll just tell you, let me just tell you the last 42 hours. I jumped on a plane, flew to Utah, did two business meetings, four podcasts, but brought my daughter and my wife. And I wanted to do four hours of snow, so we went and played in the snow and did all this fun stuff. But then my son was home and I missed him, so we flew back to Phoenix. So I could spend four hours with my son, I played baseball and ping pong and basketball. And then I dropped them off at his mom's and I jumped on the plane and I flew here. Got here late last night, had a meeting last night, had one this morning and love being here right now. That's just the last 42 hours.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  That's commitment.

• 23:46Dean Graziosi?

  But it's always like that, right? So I didn't say that to brag because we all have busy lives.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:51Dean Graziosi?

  We all have a lot going on. But what drives me and kind of goes back to personal development. Sometimes the, our buddy Randy Garn, we both know very well, always says, "The little things aren't the big things. The little things are everything." So for me, what keeps me going, listen, I had something today go completely sideways in one of my businesses, like the carpet got pulled out of something I never saw coming. Just a, it's a reason I was a half hour late. I'm never late for anything in the world. Had something go sideways today. But how do you, how do you take that in and still find a way to look forward and get up early and hustle is having such a big compelling future that's always changing that it pulls you towards it. So in my business right now, I want to make self-education the new norm.

• 24:32Dean Graziosi?

  I want to give people, the world, an alternative to the traditional education system and traditional trial and error. Tony and I both feel that same way. That's why we worked so hard to create this.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:42Dean Graziosi?

  Right? So I wake up in the morning, literally if it's a tough day, I'm like, I'm going to let the world down if I don't do this today. If I don't hustle. I, listen, I'm 51. I feel blessed. I have the house in my life to do, like if I wanted to bail one night, I could, I could bail today and never do another thing and be totally fine and not run out of money ever. But what would that do? Like there's no passion in that for me. For me, it's like, I want to, I want to leave a legacy. I want to change the world. So I got a couple of things for me that are non-negotiables is I get my kids half the time.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Half the time, half your time?

• 25:18Dean Graziosi?

  Half my time.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Like your waking time?

• 25:20Dean Graziosi?

  Right, so.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  So if you're awake 16 hours?

• 25:23Dean Graziosi?

  Oh no, I mean, half the time, meaning I get them half the week. So I get them, I get them three and a half days every week. I get them 15 days every month, right? So I replace quality, uh, quantity with quality. So every day they're with me at three o'clock, I'm outside their school. I don't care. There's no business deal in the world. There's no meeting, there's no podcast, there's not a billion bucks that could stop me for that. That's one. I coach every little league, coach baseball, coach softball. Nothing can change that. I want to spend time with my wife and keep maturing this relationship. I love my team. I love impacting the world. Nothing else gets my attention and I think about somebody taking away any of that from me and I get out of bed faster, quicker, stronger than anyone and I have more energy. Everybody's like, I just did all these podcasts, people are like, "How do you get so much energy?" It's like,

• 26:07Dean Graziosi?

  because I know where I'm going and I stare at it and I think about it every day. Like, people say, "How often do you gotta look at your goals?" Every day. Because the world's gonna gobble you up if you don't. So, that's why I have so much energy towards my businesses. Also with my relationship. I know what it's like to go through a divorce. That sucks for everyone. I know what it's like to be in the wrong relationship. I know what it's like to not feel love and feel lonely. Like, I remember years, I'm just being, I remember years of being, New Year's Day, I'd watch the ball drop alone for like five years in a row and I used to just think, "Man, I'd love to just find somebody I was like, I'd love with. Like, I wanna kiss somebody on New Year's." That was the day that hit me for some reason more than any other day.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  You see everyone kissing.

• 26:46Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, but it hit me, like, everybody, and the outside world thought my life was perfect and me, I'm, I have all these great people around me, all this money, and my heart is so lonely on the inside. So I remember that and I know the way I feel now, my heart is completely full. I kissed the love of my life on New Year's this year and when I see that and I feel it and I'm grateful that God, I have it, my compelling future is to make this woman love me more every year. And that's what I just wake up and keep doing. I legit put energy into it I never did before. I think of ways all the time to surprise her, to make her go, like, I'm like, "How can I get her to love me more?" Because the more I give of me, the more I get back.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Wow. Now, something you said there about a bigger compelling future, is that what you mentioned it? Having a bigger compelling future? I think there's probably 80, maybe 90% of people in general, I feel like, don't have this massive or big compelling future. They have a goal or a dream, but it's not big enough to get them out of bed every morning when they're tired and all those things, right? So there's a big group of the world that I feel like doesn't know what their big compelling future is and then there's a... A group of the world that has made it, they've made a bunch of money, they've built a company, they've sold, you know, have more money than they ever thought they would make in their lives. And they kind of lose that big compelling future because it's like, well, I'm not hungry anymore.

• 28:07Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  So how do those two types of people recreate that or rediscover?

• 28:12Dean Graziosi?

  Really great question. So-

• 28:14Speaker 01

  On either spectrum, you know, like the beginner or the one who's already made it.

• 28:17Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, yeah. So we'll talk about the one who made it in a moment. The beginner or just starting. I just, I'm just gonna get really simple on this. I look at it like a beacon of light, right? What's a lighthouse, right? It tells the boats either where to go or where not to go, right? It's a light that the ships used to see way out and they'd know how to get to the shores of the east coast, up in Boston, those areas. That's where lighthouses first came into play, right? So I think of a lighthouse like a beacon of light that we all need to go towards every single day. Like, I need something that gets me out of bed to look at it and go, oh, that's why I'm getting up. That's why I'm working hard. But what happens is so many of us have already surpassed the goals we had when we were 19. Like, most everybody listening right now, if you went back to your 19-year-old self or 17-year-old self and said, "You're gonna do this and do this," you're like, "No way, that's so cool."

• 29:03Dean Graziosi?

  But we don't keep taking that lighthouse, that beacon of light, and moving it further out. I think, I like simple visuals, is what is it if it was the best year of your life? Like, we all have aspirations, right? If we're sitting here a year from now, Lewis, and it's the best year of your life, I tell everybody, "Just start dreaming. Best year of my life looks like this, looks like that. My love would be on a whole nother level. My body would be here, the money I'm making, my company's thriving." You write all those down, and then you stick them on this beacon of light and push it a little bit further away from you that you can't reach it. And it's gotta be a little bigger than you think, so it challenges you, right? Like, I don't say, "Hey, I'd like to create a course with Tony Robbins and help change a few people's lives." It's like, "No, I want to change the school system. I want to create a new way that people learn.

• 29:46Dean Graziosi?

  I want to make it so when people go to a job interview in 10 years from now, they go, "Yeah, you went to college, that's great." But where'd you get your self-education?

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Wow, that's cool.

• 29:54Dean Graziosi?

  Right? So when I think about that and it's posted on that beacon of light, like, I can't let, you know, grass grow under my feet. I gotta hustle. The other thing I like to think about is, I'm digressing a little bit, I like to play like I'm 10 points down. I like to not say, "I won before, I won the last game." It's why it's so hard for championship teams to come back and win the second year. They're kind of resting on what they did the year before. It's almost like a curse, except for the Patriots, right? But everybody else, so- So always have a compelling future deciding what's your best life and continue to reexamine it and change it. Listen, in my twenties, when I first started making money, I was a broke kid, didn't go to school, started making money. You know what success was to me is I was able to

• 30:37Dean Graziosi?

  jump on a plane on a Thursday after work, fly to South Beach Miami, get a table and dance on a table till four o'clock in the morning and party and have fun. Like that was a compelling future to me at the time. I wanted to go back and do that because I had nothing as a kid. That is so far from exciting to me now than anything on the planet. But that compelling future has changed 20 times since then. So you've got to keep changing it, keep analyzing it, make it so it gets you out of bed and then push it a little further out. And the other thing, for people who, for people who've sold, and I have a lot, we have a lot of mutual friends that have done that, sold and they kind of lost their luster. It's, it's forgetting, and I know this is personal growth 101 and everybody's heard it, but it's forgetting that this journey is the excitement.

• 31:20Dean Graziosi?

  It's not the end, right? And everybody that cashes out realizes that. So I would just look at it as the two different entrepreneurs. And you should self-identify. There is an entrepreneur that is a lifestyle entrepreneur. It means I get to a certain amount of money I don't need anymore. I want to golf a couple of days a week. I want to wake up at 10. I make a million a year, whatever that number is, and that's all I want. The other entrepreneur is an accomplishment-based entrepreneur. That's, I climb this mountain, there's a bigger one. I want to climb that one, I climb this, I want to climb that. Just figure out which one you are. And what I tell a lot of my friends, if you're going to sell your company, have a re-engagement plan within six months. Right. Because I've watched all of them. If they go a year, they don't even know how to get back in the game. So re-engage earlier if you didn't already sold. Have a game plan quickly.

• 32:04Dean Graziosi?

  You have to, because you have all this momentum and then it's just emptiness. It's like, everything goes quiet. You have a big bank account, but then you're like, what's my purpose? What's my purpose, right? And then what I'd say is exactly that. Like, I know it's, I was here when I launched Millionaire Success Habits. I had a process in there called the seven levels deep. Just asking yourself why you're doing anything you do. So I would just really analyze your why. Again, personal development 101, but find another accomplishment, even if that's giving money away. Like, look at Branson. Like, I got the chance to spend a lot of time with Branson. He felt that until he found charities, Virgin Unite and Space. Now he's just completely jacked out of his mind up every day. You look at Tony. Tony's whole mission right now is serving people and contributing. He's giving more money away than he ever did before. It gets him out of bed in the morning, right?

• 32:49Dean Graziosi?

  So, you just have to find that next biggest thing and have a reason to get out of bed.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Do you guys have a name for your child?

• 32:56Dean Graziosi?

  We do.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Is it public or no?

• 32:58Dean Graziosi?

  It's not. Can I tell him?

• 32:59Speaker 01

  No, you don't tell me. You don't tell me.

• 33:00Dean Graziosi?

  I can tell you. By the time this comes out, it's a boy.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Boy.

• 33:04Dean Graziosi?

  I haven't told anybody. His name's gonna be Luca.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Oh, that's my nephew's name.

• 33:07Dean Graziosi?

  Really?

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 33:08Dean Graziosi?

  Luca Graziosi. You're the only person we told. We didn't tell our family, so that's how much I love you, bro.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  This won't come out for another month, I guess, so... So, Luca, what a great name. Is it after something?

• 33:19Dean Graziosi?

  No, just a...

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Just like the name?

• 33:21Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, because Graziosi's so long, we wanted to give a little...

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Luca, that's a good name. How's it spelled, do you know?

• 33:25Dean Graziosi?

  L-U-C-A.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Okay, my nephew's L-U-K-A.

• 33:29Dean Graziosi?

  Okay.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  After Louis and Catherine.

• 33:31Dean Graziosi?

  Oh, nice, nice, yeah.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Hypothetical. Let's say you get to write a message to your son in a letter. And you're never able to say this message to your son throughout his entire life. Obviously, you're gonna be able to do this, but let's just say hypothetical. You're gonna live a long life, you're gonna see Luca grow up and be this incredible young man, and do everything he wants to do, but you'll never get to say this message to him until you're gone.

• 34:00Dean Graziosi?

  Okay.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  And there's a letter he gets to open up.

• 34:02Dean Graziosi?

  Wow.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  And you get to... Someone hands it to him the day you're gone, and he gets to read a letter. That you can never say these exact words, but it's everything you want to tell him.

• 34:13Dean Graziosi?

  Wow.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  And it'll be the most important message he ever hears. What would be that message? Just, obviously, I didn't prep you for this, but what would be that message that you could never tell him? But it's the most important thing that you need to tell him. And he gets to learn it the day you're gone.

• 34:28Dean Graziosi?

  Well, you know, I don't want to just give a canned message that comes to my heart. Because if I was thinking through the eyes of my son, there's a couple of things. Part of that letter would say, I shouldn't say don't listen, then listen to the right people. You know, we have so many people giving us opinions and advice. I already have two children, right? Thirteen and eleven, Brianna and Brody. And I tell both of them, be careful who you listen to, even me. Because, and I tell them, like, if you have something that's passionate and it's driving you, you have to go for it in spite of what anybody thinks. Because the world is always telling us what road, what path to walk on, what's right and what's wrong. And this life, we only have one shot at it. And I mean, you know, I'm in a space where I get to meet thousands of people on a monthly basis.

• 35:13Dean Graziosi?

  And I meet so many baby boomers, or guys in their 50s, or women in their 60s. Like, God, I wanted to do this, but my mom fought. I want to do this, but my teacher said. I want to do this, but my, like, they have so many of these guidelines, or these feedback coming in. So I, to simplify that, I would tell them to listen to the voices inside and gain capabilities from people who've already done it.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:34Dean Graziosi?

  I would tell him, I guess one of the biggest things I'd say is watch the stories we end up telling ourselves. I don't know where they come from. I'm sure you have your own.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:43Dean Graziosi?

  And when you decided to do this, I'm sure there was a million stories saying you can't read good. Or, you know, you're a football player, you're not someone who could impact lives. Like, we all have this, this is a really tough question. I don't want to just give some canned answer. I'm thinking if I was going to write to my son, I'd say, okay, I mean, back up. I would say, you're always going to have two voices that live inside of you. You're going to have one to say, ah, that's risky, probably won't work. You're not smart enough, you're not big enough, you're not, you know, you don't live in the right area. You're going to have that voice that always lives inside of us, that voice of self doubt. And you're also going to have this voice that says, we got this, we can do it, we'll gain the capabilities. I don't care what anybody else says, I'm going to make it work, I'll fight through it. And I'll just say it's okay to have those two voices.

• 36:27Dean Graziosi?

  Just this one's got to win by a little bit.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:30Dean Graziosi?

  Not a lot. The score could be 21, 23, but this voice has got to win.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:34Dean Graziosi?

  So I'd say fuel the voice of, you know, that empowers you.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  That's good. It's a good letter.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Imagine your son.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Has watched you accomplish so many things over the next 50, 100, 200 plus years. Old as you want to live, you're gonna live forever, I feel like. And he's witnessed everything you've gone through. What do you want him to say he's most proud of about you? At the end of the day?

• 37:01Dean Graziosi?

  Tough question, bro, this is, this is great. I'm gonna have to write all this down in my journal for my, my son. I would say, uh, one, that I loved his mother. Because if I love his mother the right way, he'll find love like that. I didn't have a good example.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:17Dean Graziosi?

  And I didn't do so great.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 37:19Dean Graziosi?

  And I worked really hard to make that right. I would say that, uh, that my dad knew his values and he stuck to them.

• 37:30Dean Graziosi?

  And then he never gave up.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 37:32Dean Graziosi?

  You know, I think, I think if we, it's so many, it's so funny. So many people ask me, they want that definition of success. I don't know if you get that question a lot, like, okay, yeah. All right, Louis, just tell me the one thing I can do. Like, it's, it's like, okay, don't hold on.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  One day, one day.

• 37:44Dean Graziosi?

  Here it is, right? But if I, if I could give three things to anybody, nothing ever works without hunger. If you're not hungry to learn, hungry to grow, hungry to make an impact, hungry to support your family. If you're not, if you don't have real hunger, like I just wrote a book called The Underdog Advantage. If you don't feel like an underdog, even if you're successful, there's a lot of people gonna pass you up that are hungrier than you. The second thing is focus. You asked me about my relationship. I said, burn the boats, stay in one swimming lane. You gotta put focus on it. I know you're putting a lot of focus on this podcast. You're gonna blow it through the roof because your focus is there. Your focus is like a shotgun. You're, you're doing everything good. You got a laser, man, it just grows. It's just the way it is. It's why I'm putting so much time into this partnership with Tony,

• 38:29Dean Graziosi?

  because it's growing like crazy. We're impacting lives. So it's hunger, focus, and measurement. I think those three things can allow you to have a foundation for success. Like, I would, I would. I mean, measure means you wouldn't play a football game if you weren't keeping score.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 38:44Dean Graziosi?

  But you can't run a company without knowing numbers of where you were, where you want to go, and measure against it. If you're losing weight, you weigh yourself, right? So, we need to measure those factors that make a relationship amazing. Because if you measure, you go, wow, when I come home and I look at my phone after not seeing my wife all day, it makes her sad. I'm measuring that. No more looking at my phone when I come home. I want to look my wife in the eyes and say, "Did you have a good day?" Like, you measure that and you adjust. You measure again. If you're gaining weight, you measure and you change the way you're eating. You're losing the game. You measure, you change, you start running the ball more. A lot of people don't measure their life, and their marketing, and their business. It's like, people will just do ads or do promotion, and they're not measuring it methodically, so they don't know if it's winning or losing until they go out of business.

• 39:29Dean Graziosi?

  So, hunger, focus, and measurement are the three things I always tell people. You have those three, you've got a great foundation.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Those are powerful, yeah. And what do you think would be the thing you'd want Lisa to be most proud of you? At the end of the day, to say, "She's most proud of what specifically?" Things that you did, said, became?

• 39:47Dean Graziosi?

  I was a man of my word. I did what I said.

• 39:51Dean Graziosi?

  Because in today's world, that's, I don't think that's honored as much as it should.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:55Dean Graziosi?

  As it should. I mean, I don't think it's respected as much as it used to be. Honor was such a big thing. Now, it's like, ah, my buddy always BSs like that, or like...

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:03Dean Graziosi?

  I think it's lost a lot of its value, and I don't think, since the day I met her, I don't think there's anything I've ever told her that I didn't do or fought to try to do.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:12Dean Graziosi?

  And I think that's a...

• 40:13Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 40:14Dean Graziosi?

  And I'd like her to say, "I was a great role model for our kids." I think the world needs some more role models.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  So true, man. You're a great role model. You had a big year last year. Fifty was huge.

• 40:24Dean Graziosi?

  It was.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Right?

• 40:25Dean Graziosi?

  Probably the biggest year of my life.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  On every level.

• 40:27Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Personally, emotionally, physically, you're in better shape, made more money than ever before, like, everything grew in a powerful way, right?

• 40:36Dean Graziosi?

  True.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  What's the one thing that you learned that you need to still let go of from last year, or years, that you're letting go of moving forward this year?

• 40:46Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, another good question. I would say that still inside of me, I'm a broke kid.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Really?

• 40:52Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, I was, I, you know.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Doesn't that create hunger for you?

• 40:54Dean Graziosi?

  It does.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Is there a way to be hungry

• 40:56Dean Graziosi?

  No, that's a great question.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Without having the brokenness inside? Or the Tom Brady chip on your shoulder from 20 years ago? Of being picked in the 7th round or whatever.

• 41:04Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Is it still?

• 41:06Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, and I think there's a really, uh, there's a, there's a great way to do it. I've worked on myself on so many different levels, but I think, deep down, I still hustle like that kid that was told he couldn't, that had dyslexia, was in special reading. And I think that's a really, I think it's healthy. I think it's healthy to the point of getting momentum, like getting the rocket off the ground. Takes so much energy. So if running away from an ugly situation gets the rocket off the ground, use it. But I think, once you're out in orbit, you don't need to hit the gas so hard. You kind of let those things go. So 2020, what's that?

• 41:39Speaker 01

  How do we let go of that story for all of us from the past? Whether it's, you know, the broken kid, or the broken parents, or

• 41:45Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Was never pretty enough, or smart enough, or the friend bullied me? How do we let go of that story? Or do we hang on to it a little bit?

• 41:53Dean Graziosi?

  Well, so, I've done a lot of therapy.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:55Dean Graziosi?

  Right?

• 41:56Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 41:57Dean Graziosi?

  The best way, and I'm, for those of you who are therapists and know this better than me, I'm sorry if I screw it up, but one of the best ways I've done it, and I had to go through this when I was separating from my kids, and I have to say separating from my kids, because that was the part that was giving me angst and anxiety, is just going back and seeing where the fear came from. For me, when I went back, let me go back to one of the toughest things is, I was literally having, I was having debilitating anxiety. Like, I've never been, I've never had anxiety in my whole life. When I was, when it was finally, when it was the month before I was gonna sit down with my kids and say,

• 42:28Speaker 01

  We're separated.

• 42:29Dean Graziosi?

  I'm leaving, right? I'd already been living in a separate bedroom for two years. They knew that. But now I'm leaving the house. I already got another place, and I gotta sit and look at them, and I'm having anxiety to where, like, it felt like I was dying. I'd like to, like, say, "I had this, and I was strong, and I went through the process." Dude, I was popping Xanax twice a week. I never had taken aspirin. Like, I haven't taken medicine now in five, four years. But I was popping Xanax twice a week, and slugging it down with two glasses of wine, just so I could feel okay for like, two hours. I didn't know how to, and I was meditating, doing yoga, going to counseling. I was watching Wim Hof. I was doing the breathing. I was doing all of it. And I'd get 20 minutes, and boom, I'd be back into this panic stage.

• 43:10Dean Graziosi?

  For me, one of the things that I realized is all of that was from my eight-year-old self and six-year-old self when my parents went through a really bad divorce. And we were hiding from my, like, it was just weird. We, lots of crazy stuff, right? We were literally hiding from my dad because he was gonna come. And I realized that I was still feeling like that six-year-old kid who thought I was gonna die, right? And the process I went through is sitting with my six-year-old self. And I know that's probably therapy 101. It wasn't to me, I never heard of this before. But I was with Dr. Amen, Daniel Amen. He made me find that six-year-old version of myself. He said, "Think of a place you like." I thought of a stream that I used to fish at by myself. It was my little sanctuary.

• 43:54Dean Graziosi?

  I'd come home from school when there was chaos going in my house. I'd grab my fishing pole. I'd walk, you grew up in Ohio, you know how quick you go to any stream, any pond's got fish. Some crawdads. Yeah, exactly. I'd go down and hide and I'd fish all by myself. And it was my peaceful moment. So now I'm sitting in that stream with my six-year-old. I pictured, I remember a jean jacket I had when I was probably eight. But I pictured this jean jacket I had on. And I had a conversation with that eight-year-old, six-year-old version of myself. I said, "Hey, you gotta stop worrying. We're good." All the things, I got goosebumps talking about it. I said, "All the things you were worried about, all the things you were afraid of, none of them happened. Your life turned out amazing. You're in a great relationship. You have two incredible kids. You're impacting the world. You gotta let it go, because I promise you, you're safe." And then Dr. Amen's taken me through this.

• 44:39Dean Graziosi?

  And I literally hugged my eight-year-old. I said, "Hug him and tell him he's okay." And he's like, "Say it out loud." And I'm saying, and I'm not crying. I'm like, like sobbing. Like, like, like the hardest cry of my entire life. I'm hugging this younger version of myself and saying, "We got this. We're okay. You're not gonna die. You don't have to be afraid." And it really got to my heart. And it was, it was part of the healing process. And I think it's the same thing with everything. Like, I have to go back and say, you know, the seventeen-year-old kid when all my friends went off to college and I knew I wasn't. And I was gonna take my dad's business and my dad's business went out. And I'm like stuck with nothing and I'm living off credit cards. I still feel that some days and that's why I hustle. Like I'm broke. Like you ever watch, you know how I work.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Work your ass off, man.

• 45:23Dean Graziosi?

  And everybody's like, everybody, they must wonder like, does he do it? It's like, no, I want to.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:28Dean Graziosi?

  Right? But I think, I think I need to spend time, now that you said it, I need to spend time and go back to that seventeen year old kid and say, hey, man, you're just fine. Right? And you go through that process, I gotta hug him out.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:40Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah. So I think that's the process. I mean, that was a process that worked for me.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then hug the, uh, the forty six year old version of yourself going through the divorce.

• 45:48Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  And hug him out and say, it's gonna be fine. You're gonna look what you're gonna create.

• 45:52Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  After you, you separate and get through the divorce.

• 45:54Dean Graziosi?

  You know, I've said this to you before, maybe even on the last podcast we did, but there is zero doubt in my mind that something I wish I learned earlier. And again, this is something I put in a letter to my kid.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:05Dean Graziosi?

  To Luca or to any of my children is our next level always lives on that thing that we're afraid of the most. Like, I don't think we're allowed to get to our next level until we face it. I mean, look at, you just did an amazing trip. Fearful stuff. That was little, but look at the breakthroughs you had in that little piece of just cold water.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 46:24Dean Graziosi?

  I look at so many things that I avoided for years. I mean, even in my last relationship, I woke up for seven years straight, every morning. And the first thing I'd think about is like, when am I gonna end this?

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. I know that feeling. It's horrible.

• 46:37Dean Graziosi?

  It's a horrible feeling. But then that, even though I still did massive, had massive success in my life, massive gains, ran my company. That was still like a weight on my shoulders.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Huge weight.

• 46:47Dean Graziosi?

  Why do you think I had such a good year last year? If you, if you had to look at it from the outside, you know me for about six years now. What do you think one of the reasons I had a great year?

• 46:54Speaker 01

  I think you were, I mean, relationship.

• 46:56Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  You were in the right relationship and you were excited about the relationship and you were in integrity with yourself in the relationship. And so there's no weight. You're in complete freedom because you have everything you need with that.

• 47:08Dean Graziosi?

  I, I was hoping you said that because I'm just in complete alignment. Like, there was a part of me that was a fraud, even though the world didn't know, I knew it. Right? So all of a sudden, when you're in complete alignment, like the weight, you don't realize you were carrying around two hundred pounds on your back. Right? You wake up and you think about gratitude and where you can go and your compelling future. So I think it just all ties together. And the other thing too, I know Bill Gates says it and Tony Robbins says it. A lot of people say it. It's been around for a long time, but we all overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in five or ten. And the next five years is gonna go by like that, no matter what, right? My last five years, like that. So, no matter where you are, you might say, "Well, Dean, now you're 51, you went through all that stuff, you got money, but it all has to start at one moment."

• 47:51Dean Graziosi?

  Like, this podcast, I enjoy being with you so much, man. And there's, I'm trying to get a lot out in a short period of time, but if you just take what serves you and throw the rest away, if you took anything from this podcast today, just know that we have to start someplace. And if you're in a rough spot, just decide to start today. Like, there's always a line in the sand where you could say enough is enough. Like, say yes to something you've been wanting to say yes to for a long time. Say no to something you've been dragging your feet on, because I know with me, my life was stuck for seven years, stuck. My income was stuck, who I was as a parent, who I was as an example, who I was as a role model. I mean, what kind of role model would I have been if I stayed in that old relationship?

• 48:33Dean Graziosi?

  I'm not advocating divorce, but for me, it wasn't the right relationship. I was living in a separate room. I was seeing other people on the side and my ex knew it. Like, we had this thing and it was so like, ah! And finally, when I just looked at it and said, "No, there's no more excuses. I gotta face this pain now." It was crippling until it just stopped. And then it was over. And then there was the next level of me. And, you know, and now that I've faced that, nothing seems scary.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:02Dean Graziosi?

  You know?

• 49:03Speaker 01

  I love this stuff. This stuff I love to talk about. We've got a few minutes left, but I want to talk about financial freedom. Because I know that financial freedom isn't the solution to happiness, but it sure as hell is a solution to a lot of things.

• 49:18Dean Graziosi?

  It sure is.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  It may not be the solution to your fulfillment, but it can be the solution to a lot of suffering in the physical world.

• 49:27Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, it sure can.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  And I think, and you know a lot of rich people that are extremely happy and fulfilled, and you know probably a lot of rich people that aren't happy and fulfilled, based on their values and integrity and their mission and what they're doing. It's not, it's not everything, but it's, it's a big thing.

• 49:43Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  And I think when you lack the financial freedom, you lack choices in your life. You lack the ability to do certain things, get rid of certain problems. You're more of a, you have to commit to certain things you don't want to commit to. All those things. You have to give up time in a certain way. So again, it's not the only thing, it's not everything, but it's pretty close to necessary for us to be able to have certain freedoms in our life when we maximize this. For the last three years, I had a mastermind. That brought me a lot of financial freedom, but it also allowed me to impact a community of people on a massive way.

• 50:18Dean Graziosi?

  I've been to one, it was amazing.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you were an amazing teacher at it. And they were able to impact their audiences in a big way as well. So through impacting a smaller group.

• 50:26Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, exponential impact.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Made exponential impact and amazing income as well. You've got mastermind.com. A year ago, you launched this program with Tony Robbins that blew up the world. One of the biggest launches in the world because, not because it was you two only, yes, because both of you have this, you know, 60 years of experience together, but because it's such a, it's not easy, but it's a simple solution to teaching people what you already know, like you said, teaching hair extensions, if you're a hairstylist, to a group at a high price as opposed to doing one-on-one trading for your ton. It's, there's so many people out there that are doing masterminds now that are changing

• 51:09Speaker 01

  their financial freedom and at least bringing in a big chunk of change and impacting people in an exponential way. Can you share what this is all about, how they can get involved, and why, who masterminds are for and who it's absolutely not for?

• 51:24Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, really great question. And I know we're all over the place today and I love talking about this. It's just, it's hard to get it all out in a short period of time, especially you and I haven't seen each other, I want to catch up. But first off, on money, here's the best way to look at money. The reason I drove so hard to make money in my life is because of my mother and my father. They both worked their tails off, for lack of a better word, like worked so hard. My mom and dad split when I was three, my dad didn't help out, my mom had three jobs, came home at seven o'clock at night, her back hurt, her feet hurt, crappy jobs, like sweeping the floor and cleaning houses and cutting hair, like miscellaneous stuff, right? So I learned in an early age that hard work didn't equate to income. Now, since they worked so hard on that, they had no time for anything else. They didn't work on their health, they didn't work on relationships, there were nine marriages

• 52:09Dean Graziosi?

  between them because they never had the chance to work on themselves. Hustle, hustle, hustle, pay the bills, and we got evicted. I lived in a trailer park, we got evicted from a trailer park. Like, so I realized at a young age that money might not make you happy, but it allows you freedom to work on you. And I saw that. So my first desire was to get my mom retired. That's what, that was my rocket ship left. And in my twenties, I retired my mom. But not until I got to a point where money wasn't an issue. That's when I started working on me. That's when I looked inside and said, what are the beliefs I had? What, how do I work on my personal growth? So, the one thing I can say about money is get it out of the way. So you can find out who you truly meant to be. Because if not, it's like, and it's the last thing I'll say, and I'll tell you what Tony and I are doing.

• 52:52Dean Graziosi?

  If I said to you, have you thought about the oxygen in this room since we've been here?

• 52:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 52:56Dean Graziosi?

  No, but if I put my hand on your throat and closed your windpipe, it'd be the only thing you think about.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:00Dean Graziosi?

  The problem when you don't have enough money in your life, it consumes so much of your thinking. You can't create the perfect relationship, the perfect body, eat right, have a health coach. Those things don't happen. So for me, I want...

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Cause you're in survival mode.

• 53:12Dean Graziosi?

  You're in survival mode and it becomes this obsession and since you have lack of it, you feel bad, you hate it, despise it and want it all at the same time. It's like this crazy nonsense. Here's the thing, make more money, give it all away after you get the lifestyle you want, if you want to, but see the freedom it gives you to become a better version of you. Simple as that. And that's the way I frame it and keep going. What Tony and I did, it's because self-education made such an impact on our lives, right? Both of us took that path. He learned from Jim Rohn. I learned from him. We went down this path and now we came together after all these years. Because self-education is becoming the new norm. It's not just, it's not a thing. More people are becoming, joining masterminds and learning from other people more than ever before in history.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Courses, podcasts.

• 53:55Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, they're opting out of college. Or not going to college, or people are not going back to college and they're deciding, who can I learn? I'd rather learn from the professional doing it than the professional teacher in a classroom who's teaching it, right? And people, you know, I mean, if you're listening or watching, you know everybody. You know someone that's in a mastermind in a group and their life is changing. Just like when I went to your group, all those lives changed. It was amazing. So we got together and said, if this is becoming the new norm, Forbes said it's heading to a billion dollars a day. It's at 455...

• 54:24Speaker 01

  Self-education.

• 54:24Dean Graziosi?

  Self-education. It's at 455 million. It's going to a billion a day. And we just decided, if this is going to be the new norm, who better than Tony and I? We have so much experience, 60 years between us to create the blueprint on how to extract what you know. And share it with others to impact their lives and get paid to do it. So I mean, if I was just at Rachel Hollis' event and event after, but I always ask this on stage when I, when I go on now, I said, if you had two choices at the end of your life, you can make a massive amount of impact or a massive amount of money, which one would you choose? I say money, no one raises their hand ever, say impact, everybody. And I say, leave your hand up if you'd like to do both and everybody cheers. But that's really what this industry allows you to do because

• 55:05Dean Graziosi?

  whatever it is that you know, if you have a year in something, two years, five years, 10 years, there's somebody today, starting out at day one, and they can either learn through their own trial and error, they can go down the traditional education path that's not serving people, or you can extract what you know, you know, and share it in a Zoom training or an in-person workshop or a community or a group. They pay you higher money because they, they say, I could take 10 years to learn it or spend a weekend with Lewis. Which one's more economical? And this is what's happening all over the world. Tony and I launched a course, the blueprint on how to do it. We're in 80 countries, 24,000 people strong. Every niche you could possibly imagine. We have a Facebook group with 22,000 people, 167,000 messages a month.

• 55:50Dean Graziosi?

  We're, we just passed our 1100 video of people sending in, changing their life because they're like, oh my God, people need what I'm good at because what we did is we realized people, most people are unconscious competence. Like they're good at something, just don't know how. So we created a process to extract it. And then once you realize, oh man, I am good at that. And then how to identify someone who needs it. We use social media, instead of social media, using you and get people to say, hell yes, I want to pay you for that to go faster. And it's, it's become, it's really become a movement.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's amazing. And we've got, you've got a free training coming out too, right?

• 56:24Dean Graziosi?

  We do, we do. We're doing it once a year. So February 27th, we're going live again. Last time we had over 200,000 people show up.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  I remember the power of this thing.

• 56:32Dean Graziosi?

  It was unbelievable. And I think, I think this year will be even greater.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  What's going to be on this?

• 56:37Dean Graziosi?

  We created a link for you. So don't be afraid. I think it's greatnesslink.com. If you go to greatnesslink.com, you can see it, check it out, reserve a spot and get there. But what we're going to do is show people the blueprint. If you have a skill, a hobby, a passion, an expertise, or even if you went through an experience and you're on the other side, there's people out there dying for that knowledge. So we show people how to extract that knowledge, and again, how to identify the perfect person that wants it, how to market to them, and how to run an event to train them. Whether that event is a half hour Zoom, or a half a day Zoom call, or a two day in-person event, because here's the thing, the knowledge industry is lots of things. It's podcasts, it's books, it's courses, it's coaching, all that's amazing.

• 57:20Dean Graziosi?

  I've done all of them, I'm a multiple New York Times bestselling author, but Tony and I wanted to say, like, how do we create a way to get the impact faster? A book's a bitch. Blackboard better work. Every year and a half, I write one, and it's like, oh, it's painstaking. It's awesome, and I think everybody should, but it's not the quickest way to make impact and profits, because it might take you a year and a half, and the truth is, most people don't sell more than a thousand books. Ninety-five percent of all books in Barnes and Noble don't sell over a thousand copies. Same kind of thing with a course.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  And you might buy the book, but not get through the finish.

• 57:49Dean Graziosi?

  Exactly. Right? You're not impacting the lives of the depth that, you know, when people in your mastermind, they're sitting there, and like, they're implementing as they're in the room, right?

• 57:58Speaker 01

  They're taking action. And you said, you know, I think you said this, people don't pay attention unless...

• 58:02Dean Graziosi?

  They pay.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Right?

• 58:04Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah.

• 58:05Speaker 01

  You pay attention to what you pay for.

• 58:06Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  And the more you pay for, you usually pay more attention.

• 58:08Dean Graziosi?

  My most successful students, the ones that pay the most, because they paid for it, they're gonna pull it out. So, books are amazing, but it's not that easy. Coaching's amazing, but it's more of a one-on-one, like, I know a lot of trainers, they make a hundred bucks an hour, but still, every hour is a hundred bucks, right? It's not exponential. And courses are amazing, but you still have to have a company and do that right. So we said, how about we just teach people to extract what they know and run a mastermind? Or do an online training? And it's been magical, and it's happening faster and quicker than we ever could have imagined.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  For me, masterminds, as a student, have been the most powerful investment of my time, is, it's not only learning from the coach or the teachers that are teaching you, it's the relationships you meet in the mastermind that are typically more profitable than sometimes the stuff you learn, it's the people you meet. I remember the first mastermind I attended about 10 years ago. I had made a half a million dollars the entire year before I went to a mastermind because I always got top 10 in a contest with Ryan Dice. And we got into this mastermind to be a part of this. And I met five relationships that weekend and we made a quarter million dollars that next month.

• 59:14Dean Graziosi?

  Wow.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  So from one year, half a million to a quarter million the next month, from those five relationships, by partnering with them on some different things. That was a game changer for me where I said, I need to be a part of masterminds. I need to join more, I need to find, you need to make sure you find the right ones because you can join the wrong ones. So make sure you find the right ones. So it was huge for me as a business owner and entrepreneur to be a part of them, but it was also huge to start one. It put me on a whole different level of credibility. It was pretty much the easiest sale. You know, once you get to that level, it's easy to sell at a high ticket when you have the process that you guys give because you give the whole process. And it's some of the most fun when you create a mastermind. So you guys create the whole process, you have everything there. You're going to be teaching some great stuff on the web.

• 59:57Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, because, listen, think of anything successful. And I love that story about masterminds because they have changed my life. It's moved the needle more than any other thing, hands down. It's my unfair advantage. I started off saying that, right? So we want the world to, listen, if you die someday with knowledge in your head, you should feel guilty and that's what we want to make it. Let's extract what you know, impact others, get paid, do it over again, right? But I think what made this magical, listen, there's a lot of courses, there's a lot of trainings. But because we have 60 years, because Tony's been doing this even 20 years longer than me, it has the three magical components. The first is the mindset. There's not many people better on the planet than Tony Robbins when it comes to getting your mindset right. You go to Date with Destiny, greatest event in the history of the world. It'll, it'll go down for 100 years, people will talk with it. His, the first part of the course puts you in a mindset where you are vibrating,

• 1:00:42Dean Graziosi?

  you are unstoppable. And this year we put another three hours in of Tony. Brand new, just unique for this course, right? It's not repurposed, we shot it just for this course. So your mindset, you're like, I could break through rock right now, right? But then after that.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  And you need that.

• 1:00:55Dean Graziosi?

  You need that because with the wrong mindset, nothing works, right? So you get the mindset, then the middle part of the tactics, how you. In a methodical way, extract what you know, so you build up your confidence, say, "This is what I'm good at." Then you build an agenda, then you use our tools that we've discovered through our masterminds. And you build your training, you go, "Holy crap, this is what I'm good at, this is my training." And then I go deep, I don't think there's many people better than me at marketing. And I give the whole process on how to use social media to... They've already done all the work to find your perfect clientele. Now you just go in and say, "Louis Fitz, Diane Fitz, Denise Fitz." And attract the exact person who needs what you're good at, and then how to run it. So now we have the mindset and the tactics, but then we went one step further and we built the implementation tool.

• 1:01:39Dean Graziosi?

  We spent a million bucks now on the software. So you get fired up, you learn how to do it, and then you go over in the software and you build it. So it's like, "I'm fired up, okay, here's how to do it, here's my page, hit submit." It's all of a sudden, now it's up online, right? So that magical three, and I've had a lot of courses that gave me the mindset. Fired up, didn't know what to do. Lot of mindset with the tactics, but then like, "Well, do I get kajabi, or do I get click funnels?" "I'll do it later," and then you never do it.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's too much.

• 1:02:07Dean Graziosi?

  So we're gonna show how these three together really allow you to jump in this industry. Listen, it's heading to a billion dollars a day, and it's one of those things, it's like when you watch people surf. Like, right now is the time the waves crested, you could be in front of it and let that wave push you. Or you know what's like, when you miss a wave and try to catch it? Like, this is the time, I think that's it.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  And it's never easier than it is right now.

• 1:02:28Dean Graziosi?

  I agree.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  To launch it, to create it, and people want this information, they're...

• 1:02:31Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, you don't have to beg them, they're looking for it.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  People are, people are reaching out to me all the time and saying, "When are you gonna recreate your mastermind? When are you gonna open it up again?" They want people who have the information, they wanna learn from those people, to replicate it faster with speed. And people are excited more than ever to invest in self-education than in traditional education. And that's why you gotta jump in on this. Check out greatnesslink.com, you can just learn more about it, you can sign up for the webinar, it's gonna be amazing.

• 1:02:58Dean Graziosi?

  Yeah, and it's live, like legit, last year we had 400,000 people sign up.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 1:03:02Dean Graziosi?

  200,000 people showed up, and then like, two days later, our email, I mean, literally, we had to bring in 20 extra temps in customer service, and a lot of it was, "I missed it, when are you going live again?" It's like, "We're going live again in a year." Like, "Sorry, you missed it." So if anything I shared today resonates, if you like watching Tony, if you like watching me, if you, if you trust Lewis... Go to greatnesslink.com, check out the details, put it in your phone, show up live. It's gonna be pretty phenomenal.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  Dean, I appreciate it, man.

• 1:03:31Dean Graziosi?

  Dude, do the best. Keep up the good work.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  I love when you share vulnerably and raw and real, so thank you.

• 1:03:36Dean Graziosi?

  You catch me off guard, so it's good.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  I like it, I like it. Thank you for everything, man. Appreciate you.

• 1:03:40Dean Graziosi?

  I got you.

• 1:03:44Lewis Howes?

  My friend, thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed this episode, if you felt it was impactful, it helped you, you learned something, then let me know. Tag me on Instagram @lewishowes and @deangraziosi and let us know. Share this with your friends. LewisHowes.com/917. You know, the fear and the insecurity and the pressure we feel from not being financially free really holds us back from our dreams and our joy. Don't let this rob you of your joy. Make sure you take action on this information and start implementing into your life and in your business today. Your career, your lifestyle. Once you get a handle on this mindset, you can become less of a prisoner to money.

• 1:04:27Lewis Howes?

  And I'm a big fan of Dean and everything that he does, and also he and Tony Robbins have partnered up to create an incredible training program for you, where you can truly learn how to extract a skill, expertise, or passion you have, and get a flood of people excited to pay you for it. If you want to learn these skills and this knowledge, go to this link right now, greatnesslink.com. Go there right now, greatness L-I-N-K, and you can sign up for a free training from both of them that will teach you how to do this, and also why writing a book or creating a course or being a consultant is not the fastest way to impact and profits. Again, go to that link, greatnesslink.com right now, and sign up to get the free training

• 1:05:12Lewis Howes?

  from Dean and Tony Robbins. If you enjoyed this, please subscribe to the School of Greatness, because every week we're bringing you top-notch experts, leaders, icons, athletes, world changers to help you take your life to the next level. That's what this is all about, finding greatness in yourself. I love this quote from Tony Robbins, "You either master money, or on some level, money masters you." Now have you mastered money yet? Or is it mastering you right now? It's mastering you, then you gotta do some changes in your life so that it doesn't. And Nelson Mandela said, "Money won't create success. The freedom to make it will." Again, I hope you enjoy this.

• 1:05:53Lewis Howes?

  Know that you matter and that you're worthy of making money that will set you free financially. That's what this is all about. If you want to inspire and encourage others, if you want to be a hero and a champion to someone else in your life, then send them this link, lewishouse.com/917. I love you so very much. Your dreams matter because you matter. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.